Posted by Demandbase on August 22, 2018

The growth of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is undeniable; legions of marketing and sales teams are getting on board. And they all want their ABM programs to stand out and take center stage with fans clamoring for their company’s products or services.

But there’s one universal question: “How do you go beyond all the hype and actually execute ABM campaigns?”

Getting your ABM band together doesn’t have to be hard. But, like most musician stories, it doesn’t happen overnight. Here’s your backstage pass to discover the Account-Based Marketing tactics that will deliver results for your organization and make you an ABM rock star.

ABM Tactic 1: Build an ABM Leadership Team
The very first step toward rock-star ABM status is all about the leadership. Before you can start any ABM strategy, you must have the right team to help guide your meteoric rise. Getting leadership in place to set ABM goals, track progress, and measure results is absolutely crucial.

First, find an “Executive Sponsor” who believes in your vision and can help make your dream a reality. She will provide credibility to your project, make introductions, and open doors which might otherwise be closed. Next, assemble the rest of your management. Your dream team should consist of leaders for sales, marketing, and operations. As a whole, these groups have strategic roles to play.

• Sales is closest to customers so they provide those valuable insights marketing needs.
• Marketing delivers the assets and activities with a focus on the pipeline and revenue objectives.
• Operations facilitate all of the alignment and collaboration.

By putting the right people in place to lead these groups and collaborate together, you can ensure a cohesive ABM strategy with an eye on metrics, deliverables and buy-in across the organization.

Rock Star Move: Establish a Funnel Working Group
ABM rock stars often create a cross-functional funnel working group. Meeting regularly, this team focuses on funnel metrics and includes key functions from marketing, sales, and operations. Review where you are with opportunities and pipeline across your businesses and key segments. Discuss what’s working, what’s not, and work together to determine next steps. These meetings can be uncomfortable, especially when expectations aren’t being met but having a forum for honest discussion using a common framework helps maintain sales and marketing alignment as well as creates more solid plans of action.

ABM Tactic 2: Reach Your Audience
After getting leadership in place, the next of the key Account-Based Marketing tactics is to build your target account lists, which may contain combinations of prospects, customers, partners. The goal, of course, is to make them your ultimate fans.

But how do you build this list? Many companies start with lists that match a specific company profile or they might use look-alike modeling to match the current customer set. But these methods are limited by either human processing or available data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly larger role with account selection by allowing companies to analyze more data sources including..

Rock Star Move: Leverage Real-Time Intent Data
What if you could create a target account list of accounts who meet your company profile but also are showing intent for what you sell, right now? And what if you could see which keywords they’re researching? What if you could determine which customers are at risk because they’re researching competitors? Using Real-Time Intent data, you can do just that. More ABM rock stars are using this tactic to create or supplement their target account lists and seeing how the sales velocity and close rates are significantly higher than target segments from their more traditionally selected lists.

ABM Tactic #3: Make it Memorable
Every great rock star has at least one song which sticks in your head. The more you hear the song, the more it grows on you. Eventually you break down and you buy it. Look at your marketing and sales activities as an opportunity to surround your targets with a message that they just can’t get out of their head. And move them to act.

For example, while direct mail has been a commonly applied Account-Based Marketing tactic, it’s now becoming even more effective when combined with other ABM tactics:

• Select your DM recipient list only from accounts who are showing intent
• Use account-based analytics to create a message and offer based on the intent keywords these accounts are showing, where they are in the decision cycle, or what solutions they’re researching
• Reinforce your DM with the same campaign creative in your account-based advertising
• Personalize your website with the DM creative and drive them to the landing page

The more times your targets are exposed to your message, the more likely they are to remember you and engage.

Rock Star Move: Invest in Sub-segments
Sub-segment your campaign audiences to create specific tactics for each. You most likely have an integrated sales and marketing campaign for your broad audience. But there’s a real pay-off when you can invest more for those high-value accounts, such as sending more expensive direct mail packages, providing better promotional offers or complementing existing efforts with P2P outreach.

Rock stars really only want to play the concerts that will help them connect with current and new fans and gain more exposure. With ABM, you have to pick the right shows, too. Successful ABM events can run the gamut from sponsored events to tradeshows. But, too often, organizations have so many “must-do” or “must-attend” events that both sales and marketing teams get bogged down with preparation, attendance and attempts at follow-up. Worst of all, many events are a bust in terms of ROI.

An ABM event strategy is key. This will help you reduce your event list and focus your energy and budget to only those which reach the right accounts. How do you do it?

• Review the factors that made previous events successful, whether it was a speaking slot, sponsorship, client dinners, briefings, or a booth.
• Look at a potential event and evaluate the percentage of attendees that are on your target account list.
• Use your booth to attract your target accounts and create opportunities for engaging with your account targets outside of the showroom floor.

Rock Star Move: Make It Extra Special
Delight the target accounts onsite. Ask them to an exclusive party, have a gift basket waiting for them in their hotel room, schedule time with your consulting team, or offer a meeting with an executive. Be sure to keep the conversation going with your target accounts after the event with personalized outreach and pass along any intel to relevant stakeholders or members of your sales team.

Now You’re Ready To Be a Rock Star
In the end, a successful rock band is a true partnership of both business and creativity. For ABM, the same is true between sales and marketing. Account-Based Marketing tactics may look familiar to traditional marketing plays, but it’s a entirely new approach and mindset. If you’re ready to learn more, don’t miss this in-depth eBook that will take you step-by-step through the Account-Based Marketing tactics and strategy that you can put in place today.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2Pvou6K

Posted by Lauren Whitehead on August 15, 2018

Lauren Whitehead is a sales development intern working out of the NYC office. In the story below, she shares her first assumptions of Demandbase and a snapshot into her summer at the company.

College students are always asked what their major is, then are forced to play 20 Questions of, “So you want to be a…” As an English and Professional Writing double major, the latter half of these conversations are never fun.

“No,” I always respond, “I don’t want to be a teacher.”

This assumption has always motivated me to think outside the box, using my writing and analytical skills for something beyond the classroom. How? Well, that answer always seemed ever-changing or, more often, nonexistent. So when April sped by and the calendar flipped to May, the end to my junior year at SUNY Cortland was no longer an abstract concept but a reality. I was once again faced with the pressing question: what now?

As if met with some universal sign, I was introduced to Demandbase. “They’re a cutting edge Account-Based Marketing firm; you need to look into them,” Alana raved. A family friend and a current salesperson at the company, I took her word, but not before chuckling to myself.

At this time I couldn’t understand how something like ABM could be so “cutting edge.” Little did I know that I had fallen into the same trap of assumptions, misjudging the field and the people I would meet within it. I had daydreamed of every stereotypical office setting used in TV shows and movies: tightly packed cubicles filled with overworked employees dressed in neatly pressed suits, a heavy silence lingering forebodingly over the floor. So, on the first day of my internship I boarded the 7:40am Metro North train to Grand Central in a two piece grey suit and close-toed heels, playing the part of the business professional I assumed I should: tidy, bland.

30 minutes later I found myself shuffling out onto the street into an endless ocean of people: businessmen and women striding, eyes front, arms swinging as though on a mission, tourist groups craning their necks to gawk at skyscrapers like baby birds waiting to be fed. The office’s location between Times Square and Bryant Park made every commute its own adventure, free concerts and outdoor movies were held on the park’s lawn, dozens of food festivals suddenly appeared overnight, and street performers occasionally made appearances on crowded sidewalks. I was literally and figuratively walking into a place of endless possibilities.

This rich sense of culture didn’t stop at the office door, but carried into everything Demandbase did and stood for. Walking into the office for the first time, I felt out of place in my overly-official getup. I seemed to clash with the sleek and modern design of the space with its exposed brick walls, steel beams, bright orange couches and bean bag chairs, cold brew on tap (yes, on tap), and felt dart board that hung proudly on the dining room wall.

I would soon learn that the office’s design translated into the place’s overall atmosphere and most importantly the employees’ energy: vibrant, exciting, eager. A naturally shy person, I was nervous to put myself out there, hesitant to ask questions and make small talk. Kevin Rooney, my manager, made it a point to involve me in every lunch and meeting, giving me an immersive experience, which prompted me to open up and fully embrace this new environment. I quickly began to feel a part of the SDR team and the little family they had made for themselves. Coworkers like Alexandra Mauri didn’t see through me as “just an intern” but challenged me, teaching me about Demandbase’s solutions, having me shadow calls and network with high ranking members of the organization. Nathaniel Udell, the manager of the sales engineer department, introduced me to another division of the company and took the time to schedule 1:1s to teach me about the inner workings of our technology. No matter a person’s title, every member of the Demandbase community was eager to help and truly believed in the value of the products they sold.

It didn’t take long to understand the ingenuity and value of the work being done here. I felt as though I was enrolled in a college course, constantly learning and being assigned meaningful projects, even working with the onboarding platform given to new SDRs. By the end of my stay there I felt confident in my knowledge of Demandbase’s products and my status as an asset to our team. Coming to work was something I looked forward to. Bagel Wednesdays and free lunch Fridays became staples of the week and a bonding opportunity where weekend adventures and corny jokes were shared.

Familiarity and comfort are synonymous with one another. As time passed the comfort I felt at Demandbase seemed rooted in me, and it was hard to imagine that in just a few months I’d be back at college, walking the halls of the English department rather than the New York office. I’d never had this strong of an attachment to any internship I’d done before. Yes, I’ve liked them and the people, but this was different.

Now, when the routine is enacted, I wait eagerly for the expected question: “So, what’s next?” “Hopefully I’ll be at Demandbase, it’s an Account-Based Marketing firm in the city,” I respond, running through the explanation of who we are and what we do in my head. “What’s that,” they ask, as if following a script.

I take in a breath and smile. “Well, it’s kind of complicated, are you ready?”

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2FnSIUM

Posted by Demandbase on July 31, 2018

The deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may be in the rearview, but according to our latest research, there’s still a long road ahead for B2B marketers when it comes awareness and implementation of the regulation. (For those of you who need a quick refresher on this topic, check out The B2B Marketer’s Guide to GDPR).

We partnered with Demand Metric to better understand how B2B marketers’ are approaching GDPR and data privacy, how the use of customer and prospect data will evolve, what challenges exist and identify new areas of investment. Below, we’ve narrowed down five of the most relevant findings from the report:

Finding 1: Awareness and education around the GDPR is still needed.
We surveyed 255 marketers from a wide range of industries, including business/professional services, consulting, education, financial services and healthcare and found that 23% aren’t even aware of the GDPR. Of those who are aware, only 32% of marketers report that their companies are fully GDPR complaint.

Finding 2: There are a lot of hurdles to overcome.
There remains much for marketers to learn and implement after the GDPR deadline. Nearly all marketers surveyed report some level of challenges when it comes to GDPR and privacy.

Finding 3: Obtaining data rights is a concern.
The marketers surveyed are particularly concerned about obtaining rights to use data through consent. According to the research, we found that the main channels that companies use to get consent include:

Finding 4: B2B marketers are vary of marketing technology vendors.
80% of marketers surveyed report concern that their marketing technology vendors may expose their company to legal risks because they are not GDPR complaint.

Finding 5: Companies are changing their approach.
60% of companies surveyed reported that they’re changing their global approach to privacy in light of the GDPR, with Europe and North America as the most affected regions.

Interested in learning more about these findings? Check out our webinar where we discuss these results in greater detail. You can register here.

Survey Methodology
The Demandbase Privacy and GDPR survey was conducted by Demand Metric among 255 marketers globally from June 13 — June 28, 2018, using an email invitation and an online survey. The majority of respondents are employed at organizations with between 20–10,000 employees and come from a diverse set of industries, including business/professional services, consulting, education, financial services, healthcare, Internet, manufacturing, marketing, non-profit, retail, telecommunications and others.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2Dmr8ok

Posted by Nani Shaffer on July 24, 2018

I’m as big a fan of marketing metrics as just about anyone. Plunk me in front of a spreadsheet, and I’ll tinker away happily for hours on end. That said, I’m also aware that misguided metrics can drive misguided behaviors. Tell a marketer she’s being judged — or worse, paid — by the number of booth visits during a trade show and watch that metric skyrocket, even while quality diminishes and conversion rates plummet.

The good news is that marketing leaders are increasingly tying themselves to business outcomes. In fact, according to Forrester, 82% of CMOs say their goals align with revenue targets. However, the bad news is that they don’t have a way — at least not one that’s transparent and trusted across the organization — to measure progress against those goals.

At first, it seemed as though multi-touch attribution would provide the answer. With a multi-touch approach, marketers have the ability to map every touch on every account and opportunity and then dictate which touches are most influential in driving any given deal. All of this sounds well and good in theory; however, when it comes to putting a multi-touch approach into practice, marketers are finding themselves running into the following challenges:

Marketing skepticism: Modeling decisions have a dramatic impact on channel performance metrics. If, for example, you switch from a first touch to a last touch model, nothing at all has changed about what happened to an account during the course of its sales cycle, but the new model gives credit for that revenue to a different channel. As a marketing analyst, the switch might be completely justified; as a channel owner, it can be frustrating and demoralizing.

Sales skepticism: Sales has a hard enough time ceding that Marketing has any impact on their deals, so rolling out a complex model that takes credit any time a prospect happens to bump into a marketing program doesn’t do much for our credibility. And even if Sales agrees with the data — say the prospect did, in fact, attend a webinar — they disagree with the conclusion that it mattered.

Channel rivalries: Attribution examines a finite number of dollars and splits them across the channels that happened to influence the deals involved. Channel owners measured this way necessarily try to prove they own the biggest slice of the revenue generated, but the real question should be how much more revenue was generated because of their efforts.

Conflicts with an account-based strategy: Instead of focusing only on the highest quality accounts, marketers are tempted to hedge their bets and blanket ALL accounts in order to get at least some of the credit for as many opportunities as possible. This, of course, runs counter to the whole point of the analysis, which is supposed to help you figure out how to be more efficient with your marketing efforts.

We all aspire to understand what drives revenue, but unfortunately, that understanding isn’t as simple as looking at existing revenue numbers and doling out credit to the various channels that happened to influence each opportunity.

Attribution models miss the glaring question of what would happen if you DIDN’T invest marketing resources against those accounts. Simply overlaying an attribution model on top of an existing funnel can be just as dangerous and misinformed as not measuring anything at all.

So how do you think about performance metrics that will help you link your efforts to business outcomes? Whether you are looking to gauge the impact of your overall Marketing strategy, a particular channel, an orchestrated campaign or an individual tactic, the question remains the same: What incremental impact does your investment have on the accounts that were targeted?

In order to answer this question, your analytics should:

Start at the audience level: Whether you’re running a campaign, testing a new tactic or tracking your broad target account list, almost everything you do starts with a group of accounts. Fundamentally, your combined marketing efforts are designed to drive these accounts through the funnel and your analytics should at least show where these accounts stand: Are they visiting your website? Engaging with your content? Converting into opportunities and closed/won deals?

Compare to a control group: This might be the most critical — and overlooked — component of all. Without a control group, you have no way of knowing whether a particular set of accounts was impacted at all by your investment. You can develop and execute a plan against a set of accounts, and you can report on the number of those accounts that turned into closed/won deals, but would they have converted anyway? Setting aside a group of accounts,ideally ones that are firmographically similar to your target accounts, enables you to understand not just how the audience performed, but how much better it performed than a group of accounts that didn’t get the same level of investment.

Consider opportunity rate: What percentage of your target accounts are converting into sales opportunities? This critical stage bridges Sales and Marketing and serves as a meaningful mid-funnel metric that helps with forecasting. While revenue is certainly powerful, and should be tracked, it can be a challenge to have to wait 6–18 months for those results. Start with the percentage of your target accounts that are building qualified pipeline.

Data is incredibly powerful but can be dangerous if interpreted in a way that doesn’t acknowledge the realities of complex B2B sales cycles. Attribution works fairly well in a B2C model, where individual tactics really can be linked to specific deals because an entire buying cycle might boil down to one click on a shoe ad. Meanwhile, in B2B, there are almost always multiple channels and multiple buyers and influencers involved in a deal.

Forcing an arbitrary split of revenue ultimately confuses the organization, breeds counterproductive rivalries and undermines an account-based marketing strategy. Instead, you should embrace the importance of cross-channel collaboration by analyzing the incremental impact of your investments into specific sets of accounts.

You can learn more about how we approach ABM Analytics here.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2zSklPU

Posted by Christine Farrier & Tenessa Lochner on July 18, 2018

In the past month, Forrester published a research report focused on the emerging category of ABM platforms, a true indicator of how far ABM has evolved. The driving force behind the continued category growth and maturation? ABM is efficient, collaborative, proactive, effective and is dramatically improving the business results for the organizations that adopt this strategy. A nice consequence is the space-rocket career trajectories for B2B marketers knee-deep in formulating and executing ABM every single day. Rockstar ABM practitioners are a highly-valued commodity and savvy B2B marketing professionals are leveraging their ABM experience for long-term career success.

In this blog, we hear directly from two marketers here on the Demandbase team who have seen the positive impact of ABM on their own careers. Mid-quarter Christine Farrier was promoted to Director, Field & Channel Marketing based on the alignment of her field activities in supporting the CLOSED/WON outcomes of her regional sales team and Tenessa Lochner was recently hired to join the Demandbase team due in large part to her unique experience building out a successful ABM strategy from scratch.

In the tips that follow below, we offer a tongue-in-cheek look at the top 9 ABM Career Killers along with useful advice from Tenessa and Christine on ways to build your professional ABM brand.

ABM Career Killer #1: Don’t network with other B2B marketers practicing ABM

“Networking and getting to know other marketers is an important piece in building and promoting your career. A great way to get to know local B2B marketers in your area is to attend local workshops and conferences. This is helpful for a number of reasons: you’re able to see multiple speakers and experts speak to specific ABM topics and you also get to meet and greet with local marketers. In these situations, make sure you speak up and put yourself out there. While it may be uncomfortable to start conversations with people you barely know, there’s a feeling right now that we are all in the ABM trenches together and the relationships you build at these events can help you with future career opportunities.” — Tenessa

ABM Career Killer #2: Hold on to a Spray-and-Pray mindset for as long as you can

“It can be hard to let go of the false comfort of spreading your digital marketing “security blanket” as far and as wide as possible. For the experienced B2B marketer who has spent the last few years trying to stuff the top of the funnel with ALL.THE.LEADS, this shift from quantity to quality can be more than a little nerve wracking. But with the right strategy and preparation, along with a few rock solid tactics, you will be ready to roll out your ABM game-plan and prepare your teams for the fact that yes, there will be fewer “leads” but they should expect more pipeline opportunities, faster close rates and contracts with bigger lifetime values. Facts and figures that will make you a stand-out candidate when companies go looking for their next marketing superhero.” — Christine

ABM Career Killer #3: Don’t educate yourself on ABM best practices and latest strategies

“Make it a priority to read articles, do research and listen to webinars and podcasts (Growth Marketing Toolbox is one of my faves). A consistent education practice is a sure-fire way to elevate your ABM career. If you don’t keep your ABM skills fresh and up to date, you will soon find yourself behind and unable to speak to the newest trends and strategies. There is always room for growth and improvement even if you are a seasoned veteran. Marketing trends and research are always changing, in order to make sure you are at the top of your ABM game, you need to be aware of new knowledge that’s out in the market. Luckily, there are many ways to go about this, including reading content from ABM leaders, taking classes or certifications.” — Tenessa

ABM Career Killer #4: Practice Random Acts of ABM

“Even if you are launching a small pilot to kick off ABM, it’s still so important that that the program or campaign is connected in a meaningful way to the larger corporate or team goals. No ABM in a vacuum! Example, if your company is focused on the adoption of a new product within the existing customer base, don’t develop an ABM program geared to bring in net new logos. Both you and the program will seem out of touch with the priorities of your organization. The ABM programs with the greatest chance for success are purposefully crafted to seamlessly integrate into existing marketing operations, goals and projections versus isolated standalones.” — Christine

ABM Career Killer #5: Don’t talk to Sales

“Nothing will derail your career in ABM faster than maintaining the belief that marketing’s responsibility is to independently develop fully-baked marketing strategies and plans with little to no input from the sales organization. ABM’s success is tied to sales and marketing alignment in transforming target accounts into revenue. This approach demands transparency and communication from two teams that may have historically talked “at” each other but not “with” each other. The successful account-based marketer is going to be figuring out ways to collaborate with sales at every step in the customer journey, from target account selection to helping pushing pipeline opportunities into CLOSED/WON territory. #PROTIP Sales & Marketing not exactly vibing at your organization? Act as an ambassador to help create new lines of communication — maybe it’s a new shared dashboard or a weekly communication to highlight priorities for both teams. It will be a win for your teams and your personal brand!” — Christine

ABM Career Killer #6: Don’t do your ABM Career Research

“Like I mentioned earlier, marketing research is always changing and evolving and that means that ABM is too. If you are looking to continue to build your career in ABM, you need to make sure you know what jobs look like out in the market. What are companies wanting from an ABM role? Do you have all the skills that most job descriptions are asking for? If not, what skills can you brush up on in order to make yourself a good candidate for the role? Since most companies have already or are in the process of implementing an ABM strategy, recruiters and hiring managers will ask you about your ABM experience even if ABM is not in the title of the role. That’s how important it has become. Make sure you can speak to your experience in a quantifiable way to show your ABM success and knowledge.” — Tenessa

ABM Career Killer #7: Focus on the metrics that DON’T matter

“I think all marketers have had that moment where they are proudly reporting on the metrics from a marketing campaign (opens, clicks, likes and follows) and there is an exact moment when the eyes of every sales person in the room start to simultaneously glaze over. No big surprise, sales doesn’t care about vanity marketing metrics and as such, neither should we EXCEPT as predictive indicators of the future success of a given campaign. Even if is a new area for development, ABM and its focus on connecting accounts to revenue, requires that we favorite a different set of measurements like pipeline velocity, opportunity age, and contract value.” — Christine

ABM Career Killer #6: Don’t follow industry subject matter experts

“Most of us don’t know everything, even though sometimes we pretend we do. We need someone we can look to when making decisions or creating brand new strategies. When you follow people who are experts in the space, it allows you to learn from the best. Find a favorite, or few, who are creating content and research that you find inspiring. Experts can provide guidance and growth for you. With all the information out on the internet today, it’s nice to be able to look to an industry expert that you trust and admire. Some experts I follow are: Rob Leavitt, Jessica Fewless, Nolin LeChasseur and Kathy Macchi.” — Tenessa

ABM Career Killer #9: Don’t keep your ABM Tech Skills up-to-date

“With the growing number of marketing technologies out there (there are over 6,800!), it’s good to have knowledge on how technology overall can help scale and improve an ABM strategy. Now, this does not mean you need to become a technical wizard. But it does mean that you need to have some base-level knowledge of why technology can help improve ABM and why it matters. To do this, you can start by seeing what your company currently has in their marketing tech stack. What technologies are working for you and what are not? What pain points are you seeing in your current ABM strategy and how do you think technology can help with that? Having technical knowledge is a great tool to have in your toolbelt for your ABM career.” — Tenessa

Conclusion.
If you’re a B2B marketer who’s passionate about driving positive results for your organization and your own career, more than likely, you are already doing most of these things. Bottom-line, increased conversion rates and high-fives from your sales team is just more fun! Building your career and personal brand with ABM doesn’t have to be rocket science. Focus on learning, growing, improving and communicating. Set some tangible career ABM goals like getting certified, publishing a few articles or speaking on a panel with other subject matter experts. Soon ABM will just be the gold standard for how great B2B marketing gets done, but until then, practice your craft, share your knowledge and take advantage of every opportunity ABM provides, both within your organization and for your own professional development.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2FkfoW4

Posted by John Dering on June 26, 2018

Getting Real With ABM

At Demandbase, we strive to not only deliver top notch ABM technology to help B2B marketers achieve more success, but we also aim to find diamonds in the rough to help our community grow from our own learnings.

We know that B2B marketers have a plethora of options to choose from. We also know — or at least say we do — that better engagement increases the chances of a sale. But we wanted to put our money where our mouth is and not simply stand on the pulpit of historical thought leaders. And so, our “Getting Real With ABM” blog series was born.

In it, we’ll dive into how we’re testing our own ABM practice, including the successes and failures we’re seeing along the way. We’ll continue to bring you the key insights as we evolve our ABM practice, so be sure to subscribe to our blog newsletter to keep up to date on the latest in ABM performance. Until then, here’s our first experiment.

How Account-Based Advertising Impacts Pipeline

For the first installment, we wanted to start with one of the first challenges most B2B marketers experience: creating awareness within high-value accounts and measuring how that engagement impacts sales pipeline down the road.

The Hypothesis:
Accounts who receive ads are more aware of Demandbase and those receiving ads who engage on our website are more likely to turn into pipeline.

We assumed the answer was “Yes — of course they will” but thought we should back that assumption up with some solid data. To do that, we designed the following experiment.

The Experiment
We relied on our own Account Selection technology to identify a set of target accounts and then delivered personalized ads to them with the goal of driving them to engage with our website, regardless of whether they clicked on the ads or not. We planned to have an evaluation period of two quarters so that the test would expand beyond a simple cohort.

Here are a few examples of personalized ads we ran during that time frame:

Next, we chose metrics to measure against our hypothesis. The test performance would ultimately be decided by comparing the pipeline generation rates for two groups:

Group A: Lifted Accounts — accounts who engaged more with our website during the test period than during the baseline period
Group B: Non-Lifted Accounts — accounts who did not engage more with our website during the test period than during the baseline period

The Results
After running the test for a total of 6 months, we categorized the accounts on our target accounts list to either Group A or Group B. Then we compared the pipeline generation rates for those groups to each other during that test time frame.

The results showed that lifted accounts (Group A) turned into sales opportunities at a 60% greater rate!

Now, some may say this is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy because of course the accounts who are are more engaged on our website are more likely to convert to a sales conversation. And while that’s true, what really matters is being able to identify those accounts and prioritize high conversion campaigns to them because these are the easiest accounts to sell to now.

Stay tuned for our next experiment: How We Cracked the SEM Code.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we approach ABM here at Demandbase, check out our upcoming live demo.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2PYbLZQ

Posted by Neha Jewalikar on June 21, 2018

A lot goes into creating a really great piece of B2B content. Countless cups of coffee. Thousands of trips to the kitchen. Hours of writing (and rewriting). And that’s just on the production end. After all the i’s have been dotted and t’s have been crossed, it’s time for the most important piece of the puzzle: making sure your content actually gets read by the right people.

But who are the right people? And more importantly, how do you ensure your content addresses their ever-changing needs?

One of the best things about creating content in an ABM world is that you not only know the answers to those questions, but you can also frame your content marketing efforts around your target accounts. But before you start panicking and thinking you’ll need to create a new set of content for each one of your audiences, you should know that ABM actually makes content creation that much more effective and efficient. In fact, in most cases, you probably already have a lot of existing assets that are relevant — you just need to find create ways to reuse and repurpose them.

As you start to wrap your head around creating content in an ABM world, the steps below should provide a rough framework for your efforts:

Step 1: Do your research

Good content starts with a deep understanding of your audience. Who are you targeting? What are their needs? What challenges are they currently facing? How do they consume content? What types of content do they prefer? What types of personas make up the buying committee?

The answers to these questions can be found through conversations with your customer facing teams, including Account Executives, Sales Development reps, Customer Success Managers, Field Marketing and Demand Gen. You’ll need to work closely with them to uncover answers and draw inspiration about the companies on your target account list. Depending on your goals, you can concentrate your content efforts to your broader list or narrow the beam and focus on select verticals, including industry, customers, geography, sales stage etc.

Step 2: Audit your existing content

When it comes to ABM, there’s this common misconception that you have to create a new set of content for each one of the companies on your target account list. While you will have to create new content, given that the needs and challenges of your target account list will change over time, there’s no need to start from scratch. In most cases, you probably already have a lot of existing assets that are relevant. A content audit can help surface those pieces, clear out clutter and help you identify gaps and prioritize what you need to create.

A content audit is also a good time to understand performance. Use Google Analytics data to look at the following metrics: page views, time on page, downloads, conversion rates, MQLs, pipeline and closed revenue. These insights will help you understand who resonates with your audience, including what’s working and what isn’t.

Step 3: Find ways to reuse and repurpose existing pieces

Following your content audit, you should have a good idea about what exists and what you’ll need to create. Depending on the audience you’re targeting, you can take existing pieces and tailor them to fit particular segments. For example, let’s say you have an evergreen asset that consistently performs well. You can tweak the copy that introduces the piece, craft a more compelling call-to-action and change up the imagery surrounding the asset, all while quickly transitioning it to fit different segments on your target account list. Below is an example of an asset we’ve transitioned to fit the Financial Services industry:

(In fact, this very blog post is repurposed and reworked to fit our blog from one of our larger eBooks, ABM is a Team Sport: How ABM Impacts Your Role. You can check the eBook out here).

Step 4: Build a distribution plan

By step four, you should have a set of new, reused or repurposed content. Now comes the hard part, you’ll need to ensure all the great content you’ve just created actually makes it into the hands of your target segments. So how exactly do you go about doing that? You can go the traditional route and send out emails to folks on your account list or run content syndication campaigns that target key companies. Or you can get more creative and personalize specific pages of your website and surface relevant pieces as target accounts show up. Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Beyond personalizing your website, you’ll also want to share your content across advertising, your social channels, your customer marketing team, your customer success team and other newsletter communications.

Finally, as you start to think about distribution, keep your sales development team in mind. They’re on the frontlines and have unique insight into the challenges and needs of your target accounts. Not only can they provide inspiration for your content efforts, but they can also promote and distribute your content to the right accounts.

Want to learn more about creating content in an ABM world? Send me a note on Twitter to learn more about how we do things here at Demandbase.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2B6oJMZ

Posted by Matt Aaronson on September 25, 2018

Programmatic advertising technology evolves so quickly, even the most advanced practitioners could be forgiven for missing a thing or two. That’s why we sat down with SiriusDecisions to step back and take stock of the rapidly changing B2B advertising landscape. Two key trends B2B advertisers should be considering:

It’s time to admit the painful reality: Leads are the wrong metric

Most advertisers know that digital advertising is not the most efficient channel for lead generation. Much of that may actually be more of an attribution problem than an effectiveness problem — but that’s slightly beside the point.

As SiriusDecisions analyst Jonathan Tam points out, the big picture of the account — its challenges, its buying committee, its priorities, its purchase process — is much more important than merely its key decision-maker (or, as is so often the case with lead-driven advertising, the person who happens to fill out a form).

Fixating on leads as an optimization goal in digital advertising campaigns corrupts the feedback loop, mis-directing our budgets and ultimately leading to waste — steering campaigns toward bidding on impressions for individuals who are less than qualified for our offering.

That’s why forward-looking B2B advertisers start by narrowing down their target account lists using data-driven tools, before seeking to engage the full buying committee with their budget, treating form-fills as a secondary metric.

Don’t tell your ad platform who your buyers are. Let your buyers identify themselves.

Job title and persona targeting miss the mark in account-based advertising in several important ways:

• They assume uniformity in the shape of your demand center across all your accounts
• The data segments purporting to identify people by job title are notoriously unreliable
• Job function and persona segments are often near impossible to scale when overlaid on an account list

Demandbase’s approach puts behavior ahead of identity. Such a proposition would have been impossible before advancements in data infrastructure and artificial intelligence. But today, we can pinpoint buying committees — anonymously — based on their research and content consumption behaviors around the web.

This approach delivers audiences that are more scalable (because we are not limited by data on-boarding match rates or questionable third-party segments purporting to know your job title) and more relevant, prioritizing individuals who are specifically showing intent in campaign delivery.

Get more B2B advertising insights from our discussion with SiriusDecisions and take a look at the next-generation Targeting Solution in the webinar: ‘The Next Generation of B2B Advertising: A Conversation with SiriusDecisions’

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2z98ayB

Posted by Demandbase on June 18, 2018

It’s been an exciting few weeks here at Demandbase: we were recently named a leader in Forrester’s New Wave ABM report, ranking high across all the criteria (if you haven’t had a chance to peruse the report yet, you can read it here). This announcement is really the culmination of all our incredible efforts throughout the years. From announcing our new ABM platform to incorporating powerful Artificial Intelligence (AI) across our solutions, innovation has been the one constant here at Demandbase. Sometimes that innovation has come in the form of new features and sophisticated UI, and other times, it’s been working quietly in the background.

In no case is that more true than in the case of data. To do ABM well, you need to be able to identify a set of target accounts and track your progress against them. Without the right data, it’s impossible to achieve ABM success. That’s why we’ve made it our mission to not only deliver the best ABM platform but to also deliver world-class data.

Recently, we put our data up to the test in an experiment with one of our customers, Optimizely. As the leading experimentation platform, it’s only natural that Optimizely wanted to ensure they were getting the highest rate of identification possible for the target accounts that were coming to their website.

Optimizely was using our data for web personalization, creating customer experiences for anonymous visits to their site. For website personalization, breadth of coverage really matters, especially since Optimizely had already determined the segments of accounts that were most important to them. For this experiment, we looked at three weeks of data in Google Analytics and set out to answer this question: how many companies in the target account list could we identify compared to another data provider?

The results were clear — according to Michael O’Connell, Senior Demand Generation Director at Optimizely, “Demandbase delivered the best match rate against our target account list.” In fact, our match rate was 82% higher.

This experiment is but one example of how our data outperforms the competition. If you’d like to learn more about our data, check out our technology page.

Originally published on the Demandbase blog: https://demandb.se/2QDkFJb

Posted by Neha Jewalikar on June 5, 2018

A few weeks ago, our VP of Demand Generation was scrolling through her inbox when the following subject line caught her eye: “Interested in learning about ABM?”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Demandbase, you should know that we’re an ABM company — we offer a solution for full-funnel ABM and spend a majority (okay, let’s be honest, all) of our time talking about the strategy. So needless to say, the email generated quite a few laughs around the office.

But laughter aside, the email did make us think about how increasingly difficult the world of Sales Development has become. Not only are sales development reps on the front lines, generating leads and mining them for opportunities, but they’re also expected to provide value with each and every interaction. In most cases, that requires a lot of time and research to do really well. But for most sales reps who serve a large patch, providing this type of personalization becomes increasingly difficult, especially as they go after more accounts. It’s often what leads to miscues like the one above.

Fortunately, there are a myriad of technologies out there (including our own Conversion Solution) that can help make personalizing efforts and delivering relevant insights much easier. In addition to investing in technology, there are also several best practices sales development reps can use to make the most out of their outreach efforts.

Here are a few recommendations from our own Sales Development team:

1. Align with Marketing.
Marketing isn’t just a department you sit by. Partner with them for your outreach efforts and make use of their content, marketing campaigns and field events. In addition to working together for outreach, you’ll also want to create a feedback loop to drive future campaigns and content.

2. Prioritize your accounts.
It isn’t enough to just focus on accounts. You’ll need tier your accounts by important factors, including website engagement, intent data and needs and interests. From there, you can prioritize your outreach efforts and go after the accounts that are most likely to convert.

3. Reach out based on website engagement.
Invest in account-based analytics technologies, which give you a clear view into the types of companies that are coming to your website. Monitor this data on a daily basis and send out timely outreach based on website engagement.

At Demandbase, our SDR team uses our Conversion Solution to identify when accounts engage with our website, understand their website activity and build tailored messaging based of their engagement. These insights can also be delivered with email, your CRM system and other collaboration tools, such as Slack.

4. Rely on intent signals.
Leverage sales intelligence tools that can help you tap into powerful intent data, which gives you the ability to understand what your prospects are reading and researching about across the Internet. Use these insights to develop relevant subject lines and messaging.

5. Discover new contacts.
Remember that B2B sales involves a buying committee. So if you’re reaching out to a prospect who’s unresponsive, find other stakeholders at that particular account, using tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and start engaging with them.

6. Personalize outreach using relevant news.
Your first interactions with new prospects don’t have to be completely cold. Spend some time researching what your prospects care about, are writing about, reading about and include links and quotes within your outreach. Not only will you increase your chance of getting a response, but prospects will also be impressed by the fact that you’ve done your homework. Here’s an example of what this looks like from our own Conversion solution:

7. Build up your social presence.
While optimizing email outreach is important, don’t forget about other channels like Twitter and LinkedIn. Follow and engage with prospects on those channels, provide insightful responses and use these interactions as a starting point for conversations around your company and product.

The tips above are a good starting point for your outreach efforts. For more tips from our Sales Development team, check out the videos below:

Inspiration: How Demandbase Sales Uses Conversion Solution | Account-Based Marketing - Demandbase

Watch as Melissa, Matt, Ben and Brad share how they use our Conversion Solution to drive engagement and results.

Originally posted on the Demandbase blog here: https://demandb.se/2t6kEEf